Abstract
There seems to be a tension between determinism and moral responsibility such that, if determinism is true then perhaps we cannot be responsible for our actions. In his On What Matters, Derek Parfit tried to find a way to dissolve this tension through discussing a Kantian argument about the noumenal world. In recent years Parfit’s argument has received some criticism, which has sought to undermine his argument while also making a variety of different claims about his actual views on this issue. In this paper, I argue that Parfit’s argument requires modification: and my proposals not only promise to make his argument clearer, but can also be used to answer some of his critics. I conclude by setting out a coherent argument—based on Parfit’s writings—for defusing the tension between determinism and moral responsibility. We will see that the truth of determinism is not a threat for moral responsibility—at least in some senses.
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Notes
And, of course, because of children’s and the insane’s inability to reflect and act on such reasons, they are not responsible in this sense and cannot act wrongly.
Because Parfit believes we can deserve many things—except to suffer.
Because there is intrinsic value in this kind of feeling remorse.
As we shall see, this is not true.
Although Parfit claims that personal identity is not important, whereas psychological continuity and connectedness are, this is not important for our purpose.
Still, I need to answer the question that: in what sense, exactly, we can be responsible?
See Strawson 2013, pp. 313–317.
Of course there are other purposes, but they are not relevant here.
See Parfit 2011, p. 260.
This was of great importance for his aim to establish a difference between RS and RB, because if responsibility was dependent on punishment, we could not be responsible in any other senses.
See Scanlon 2000, pp. 263–267.
See Pereboom 2013, pp. 49–78.
See Smilansky’s Free Will and Illusion (2000).
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MirzaeiGhazi, S. On the Parfitian Thesis of Moral Responsibility. Philosophia 47, 587–600 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-9999-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-9999-0